Letters to Margriet

14 February 2019

Dear Margriet,

Hello!

Look, I know you might find this a bit creepy, see this bold action of mine as an enormous scarlet stroke haphazardly brushed onto the pristine white canvas of your consciousness. I’m very sorry, if so. However, I can’t deny what I feel anymore; as much as I try to let it fade, it always bubbles to the surface. Yes, the truth is that ever since I first saw you at the Mauritshuis museum today, took in the chiaroscuro of your soul in those steel grey eyes that sparkled like the most brilliant of jewelry, you have become as indelible in my mind as indigo.

Well, I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is John Vernon, and I’m a barrister originally from a village called Delph --- yes, Delph. It sounds like your hometown of Delft, doesn't it? --- in Greater Manchester. Oh, I can already decipher the image in your mind of the dark, overcast skies of my hometown; that, Margriet, is precisely what life in that tiny hamlet is like: a routine of wake up, work, eat, sleep with no colour or contrast. That is why when a Dutch lawyer friend of mine named Dirk invited me to join his firm in the Land of Orange for a year, I couldn’t help saying yes. Being in such close proximity to gilded palaces and rows of brightly-hued tulip bulbs in a verdant field had certainly brought an entire palette of excitement into my world; having all of this beauty as the backdrop to my day-to-day had inspired me to explore one of the Netherlands' finest art museums….where I first gazed upon you.

As you rushed past me this morning, all resplendent in that marigold and cerulean blue turban and that gold jacket, I could feel your fiery essence, and I knew that in that moment, the black and white film of my existence got converted to Technicolor. Of course, in that fleeting moment I saw you dash across the Mauritshuis, I wished that you would train your lustrous grey eyes on me for even one second, look at me lovingly even for an instant like a prized portrait; alas, you were too busy running to the other side of the museum to even notice me. I guess, for now, I’ll have to content myself with picturing me calling you a masterpiece and your cheeks flushing a bright crimson, with painting scenes of you and I together, memories we’ll have as precious as pearls, in my head.

I don’t want it to stay that way, though. Look, Margriet, I’m going to return to England when my contract finishes in six months; I’ll have to say goodbye to the Land of Van Gogh, Rembrandt, and you. It would be lovely if I would be able to talk to you, for you to blend some joy into my last days in your beautiful country by us spending some time together. What I’m saying is this: Yes, I’d like to go out on a date with you. Please? If you say yes, I promise to treasure those moments like a jewel.

 I suppose you can respond through a letter. My address is on the pearl white envelope, so just send it there. Looking forward to your reply that would surely make everything turn to rose. Hopefully, it won’t be as long as watching acrylic paint dry.

Now seeing sunflowers when I think of you,

John

P.S.: Yes, I did ask a museum guide for your name. Did that raise a red alert in your brain? If so, oops! I’m so sorry.

****

14 July 2019

Dear Margriet,

I know. It’s been six whole months since I last put ink to paper to communicate to you, six whole months since I washed a page with the colours of my affection for you. I suppose I just wanted to give you a clear picture of what’s been happening with me, so here I am writing to you again, my jewel.

Well, I’m no longer returning to grey ol’ England. Would you believe a position opened up in the legal department of the Mauritshuis? How lucky am I! When I saw that announcement in the newspaper, I swear that immediately, everything in my view turned into a dreamy rococo painting of pale pink roses tumbling from the sky. I can stay in the Netherlands! I won’t be out of touching distance from you! I feel as if everything in my life has been brushed with the most precise strokes knowing I’m still a ten-minute walk, not a plane ride, away from seeing you regularly at the museum.

Actually, almost precise. Margriet, I don’t understand why in the six months that passed since I wrote you that first letter, I never once received a penned reply. I waited and waited until my eyes were streaked with ruby red veins, yet my postbox remained as blank as a fresh canvas. Why? I hope I'm not just some obscured figure in the tableau of your mind. Is someone else in the foreground for you (Oh, that would sting like a palette knife driven to the heart.)? Please answer me.

I know. You’re always busy at your job, always entertaining guests who come to the Mauritshuis. However, I don’t think it would hurt you to write me once. I promise that I’ll treasure it like the rarest Meiji Era calligraphy.

Wondering if you’re thinking of me during a starry night,

John

***

6 March 2020

Dear Margriet,

As you know, the entire country has gone into lockdown. The Mauritshuis will be closing to adhere to this new movement the government has imposed to keep people safe. Every single art piece will be covered in cloth as life stills in the usually crowded museum.

For me, the worst part of it all, though, is no longer being able to steal glances into those expressive silver eyes, no longer feeling that warm tempera wash of excitement inside me knowing you’re in the periphery, whilst I work. I know. I do not mean to sound like I’m exaggerating, but all of my insides feel as if they’ve been turned to marble knowing that for the time being, I have to be away from you. It’s so frustrating knowing I’m as stuck as a statue at home, unable to run up to your bejeweled self and say hello.

You know what would bridge the gap, draw a definitive line of connexion between you and me? Just please finally send me a letter. I’ve waited for a response from you for more than a year now. Please paint some sunshiny yellows into the grey of my life with your words. I can still wait.

Trying not to turn into stone,

John

***

14 February 2022

Dear Margriet,

Okay, this is getting surreal and ridiculous now. It has officially been exactly three years since I first inked you a letter, and still, I haven’t gotten a single word of reply from you. The hours feel as if they're melting into each other, much like the clocks in Dali's "The Persistence of Memory".

I don't know if you noticed (Oh, I hope you did. Otherwise, it'd be as futile as throwing pearl white paint on a blank canvas.), but I took someone out on a date at the Mauritshuis. Amalia, a partner at Dirk's firm, had been apparently admiring me from behind the velvet rope of propriety the entire time I worked there. Last week, when I visited my longtime friend at his law office, she had decided to make her feelings as obvious as a fluorescent sign and asked me out. 

Amalia. Raven-haired, brown-eyed Amalia. Amalia, who wore an all-black shirt and pencil skirt combo to our rendez-vous because "It's a classic". Amalia, who found Jan Davidsz's stunning painting "Vase of Flowers" too gaudy for her taste. 

She's nothing like you, Margriet. You would never catch her in glittering golds or the blue of the sky. Her pen-scratch thin lips would never be pursed imagining living in a Dutch Golden Age painting. Everything for her is to be placed in the blocks of prosaicness. For crying out loud, she finds earrings, especially large ones of glittering stones, tacky. Earrings!

Please just let me know that you want to be with me, that you also have a tableau of our future together with our picture-perfect children, that you exhibit even just a small dot of feelings for me. Just say the word, and Amalia would be gone from the gallery of my life; the vernissage would no longer feature her.

Please! 

Wanting to scream like a Munch figure,

John

*****

14 February 2024

Dear Margriet,

Yes, Amalia proposed to me. 

What can I do when you left me with no choice, when not once have you marked a blank piece of paper with a single word for me? Perhaps, your reluctance to reply to me will always remain abstract to me, will always be as incomprehensible as a Jackson Pollock painting. As much as my mood is tinted with the onyx colour of sadness, I suppose I just need to accept my fate: I will have to marry Amalia, be the auction item sold to the highest bidder. At least, a grey life with Amalia means a marriage, something I've pictured for myself even as a young boy. After all, I'm getting older, careening towards being painted with thin lines across my forehead.

...unless, of course, it turns out that you do want to be with me, but your love is tinctured with shyness. The wedding will be exactly a year from now, the seventh anniversary of the day I gasped as I saw you running across the halls of the Mauritshuis. Should you, at any time between now and that cursed day I wed the woman of only shade (no light), tell me that you see la vie en rose when you gaze at me, I shall dash towards you in the same way you rushed around the museum six years ago.

I'm still waiting. I can wait until the whites of my eyes take over.

Hoping to avoid an (emotionally) unequal marriage,

John

P.S.: Did I mention to you that Amalia doesn't like pearls? PEARLS !!! So strange! 

***

15 February 2024

Dear John,

Well, perhaps, I should tell Salvador Dali this: It's not just memory that's persistent; you are too. Bafflingly so.

I was hoping that after several little notes for me, far too many times you'd wasted the sapphire blue ink of your ballpoint, you would get the hint and leave me alone. It seems like understanding my lack of reply is as confusing to you as deciphering a Dadaist work. Perhaps, I believed too much that seeing as how writing to me is, well, ludicrous, you would finally see the light. I suppose I owe you a letter of explanation to make everything as clear as lacquer.

First of all, yes, I actually already have a muse and inspiration in everything I do. The day I married my childhood sweetheart Antonie, everything in my world was tinted in sunny yellows and golds. It is him, not you, that colours my world. Yes, my Astronomer is in Paris for work right now, but he's always at the foreground of my mind. And don't dare commit a heist of my heart; you'll fail.

And secondly, even if Antonie weren't in the tableau of my life, our existences would never be in harmony with one another. You were born in 1980; I saw the light of day in 1665. You are a three-dimensional human being living in The Hague; I'm a two-dimensional composite of oil pigments existing on a flat black background of brush strokes. I'm but a mere portrait you happened to catch alive as I ran back to my framed canvas because I didn't notice the Mauritshuis had already opened for the day; as you know, during closing hours, all of us works in the museum jump out of our mounted state and roam around. I hope you realise a marriage between us could never be put on paper.

Can I offer you a piece of advice, though? You see, from my spot in the gallery, I've observed how Amalia stares at you as if you're the most precious of stones every single time your eyes are glued on me. It's a shame that she's in love with someone who refuses to see that she's a work of art. So please, make her the subject of your affections. Or, if you truly can not --- if you still choose to be blind to the kaleidoscope of wonders that Amalia is, get out of the museum of her life. Let someone else discover what a rare pearl she is. She deserves someone who looks at her as if she's Botticelli's "Venus", someone who won't gaze at her beautiful heart and only see Vanta Black.

But either way, for crying out loud, this has gotten out of proportion. Leave. Me. Alone.

Hoping you finally erase this pining for me,

Margriet (a.k.a. Meisje met de parel/The Girl with a Pearl Earring)